A lawsuit was filed by the plaintiffs against Victoria resident John Borden for the same offense earlier this month.

"We're very vigilant about stopping this," said Mark Lumpkin, spokesperson for DISH Network. "We are doing everything we can to protect our signal."

Lucas, who lives at 1104 N. Valley St., is accused of purchasing a subscription to a pirate television service operated by www.dark-angel.ca in May, thus, unlawfully circumventing the DISH Network security system and receiving copyrighted, subscription-based DISH Network satellite television programming without authorization and without payment, according to the lawsuit.

In a separate lawsuit, DISH Network sued Dark Angel in Canada and seized the pirate television service's computer server and business records, which showed that Lucas had been a subscriber.

As a subscriber to Dark Angel, Lucas was able to obtain DISH Network's descrambling control words to illegally receive and descramble DISH copyrighted television programming, according to the lawsuit.

Each time the defendant tuned his pirate satellite receiver to a scrambled DISH Network television channel, the pirate satellite receiver would access the Dark Angel pirate server to request the descrambling control word for that particular channel, according to the lawsuit.

In turn, the Dark Angel server would return the control word, allowing Lucas to descramble the encrypted signal and view television programming without authorization.

In addition to wanting all of Lucas' unauthorized pirate equipment impounded, the plaintiffs are seeking damages of up to $2,500 for each violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, $10,000 for each violation of the Communications Act and $100 per day for each violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

Court documents did not list an attorney for Lucas, who could not be reached for comment.